artist statement and biography

BIOGRAPHY

LAURA PETERSON is a NYC-based dance artist creating works that challenge the limits of physicality and reframe performance spaces. Influenced by the visual art of the 1970’s, she simultaneously creates visually arresting installations and rigorous choreography. Her performances have included large scale paintings, 1000 sq ft of living lawn, 16 ft tall paper sculptures, and other giant structures. Recently, she performed her piece, SOLO, as part of the Museum of Modern Art exhibition Judson Dance Theater: The Work Is Never Done. Peterson’s works have been performed throughout New York City and nationally at venues including The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors, Jacob’s Pillow Inside/Out, and internationally in Europe and Argentina.

Peterson has been awarded residencies and commissions for over ten years, including the HERE Arts Center Artist Residency Program (HARP). She was the recipient of a Bogliasco Fellowship and residency in Italy, and residencies at Marble House Project Residency, Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning, Subcircle Residency, Dance New Amsterdam and others. Her work has been commissioned by Dixon Place (NYC), Lower Manhattan Cultural Council for the River-To-River Festival, Queens Museum of Art, Dance New Amsterdam and she received the Reflection:Response Commission at Temple University. She created two works for Nick Cave’s Sound Suits with Balance Dance Company and the Boise Art Museum, as well as repertory for the Pennsylvania Ballet and the Hartford Ballet.

Peterson has taught dance and choreographed student works for Princeton University, Marymount Manhattan College, Rutgers University, SUNY Brockport, LIU Brooklyn, CUNY Lehman College, Bowdoin College, and others. She has led workshops in the US and internationally, and is a current faculty member at The Joffrey Ballet School in New York City.

She holds an MFA in Dance from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and a BFA in Modern Dance from University of the Arts in Philadelphia.

“In Peterson’s visionary work, dancers are never characters -- they're elements of a larger whole, which itself is a sign of some larger whole.”

Tom Phillips, DanceViewTimes

ARTIST STATEMENT

I am an interdisciplinary artist working in choreography and installation art. My pieces address the intersection of the materiality of the body and the physical world. These dances and tactile environments are in constant flux throughout each work and are concerned with matter, disintegration, duration, and the elegant exhaustion of each performer.

My interest in the arts – both live performance and visual forms – has always been deeply connected to my engagement with history and politics. In my dances, I am both concerned with the clarity of formalism and the underlying philosophical and social structures. While remaining profoundly influenced by modernism and the minimalist art works of the 1960s and 1970s, my intent lies in understanding the governing principles of the world in which we live and trying to make sense of the chaotic reality of 21st century life.

I consider my art deeply American in its constant regard toward current events and its commentary on the various aspects of our contemporary surroundings, from the discontent within the individual to the political disarray of a society fixated on success.